As product launches go, the one staged by the newly branded Canadian Nordic Consortium and Own The Podium on Wednesday at the Canmore Nordic Centre certainly paled in terms of worldwide attention to the one put on by Apple at the same time, some 1,600 kilometres to the south.

“I know we’re launching today on the same day as the iPhone 5,” joked Tom Holland, Cross Country Canada’s high-performance director. “But this is OUR iPhone 5.”

Just behind him, on the ground floor of the Bill Warren Training Centre, was a treadmill, but like no treadmill that you’ll see in a fitness centre. This one is specific to cross-country skiers, designed and built by Calgary-based Treadsport Training Systems at a cost of $200,000 with the goal of putting more Canadian nordic and biathlon athletes on World Cup and Olympic podiums.

And with cross-country and biathlon events offering 30 per cent of the medals up for grabs at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and more than 50 per cent of the Paralympic medals, it’s an opportunity to get bang for the buck, suggested Own the Podium winter sport director Ken Read.

“The bar is being raised all the time, and when you see a medal slip by by two one-hundredths of a second (as was the case in 2010 when Canmore’s Devon Kershaw was fifth in the men’s 50-kilometre race), it’s a redoubled effort to say, ‘We can,’ ” said Read. “If you look at post-2010, we’re very pleased with the direction it’s going in, but we want our fair share of those 30 per cent of the Olympic and 50 per cent of the Paralympic medals.”

The treadmill has been integrated into the floor space, and rather than rising at the front to create an incline, it dips at the back, and can even create a slight downhill incline to simulate race conditions. Skiers can reach speeds approaching 35 km/h, and the uphill climbs from World Cup courses around the world can be programmed into a computer and simulated on the machine.

“It’s pretty neat, and it’s a pretty interesting feeling,” said Kershaw, a two-time World Cup gold-medallist last season. “The first time I ever used it, you’re definitely thinking, ‘Is this harness going to HOLD me?’ These things were designed for racehorses, so to have such a massive treadmill moving under your feet is a little bit of a foreign feeling, but you get used to it, and it’s a huge asset for our team. I’m looking forward to using it more and more.”

In the same room is an electronic shooting range, costing $50,000, which allows biathletes to use the treadmill and move immediately to the shooting range to practise techniques.

“Well, the fact that it’s in our back yard (is important),” said two-time Olympic biathlete Zina Kocher of Red Deer. “We can actually combine shooting with it, we can get out to the range or we can use this (indoor) dry-fire system, which is better, because you can immediately get off the treadmill and practise your shooting.”

Those are the practical aspects; in the big picture, the new training equipment, along with the Own the Podium investment of $1 million into the Nordic Consortium over this quadrennial, makes a statement, not only to the rest of the competing nations, but to Canada’s own athletes.

“That’s inspiring for the rest of us, to have this in our own skiing culture,” said seven-time Paralympic gold-medallist skier Brian McKeever of Calgary. “We don’t have to look outside at somebody else’s skiing culture to take inspiration anymore. That’s exciting for us who are active now, and for future generations.”

Bringing the cross country, biathlon and ski jumping/nordic combined groups under one umbrella is not only a wise use of funds, said Read, it’s also a way to share expertise between the groups.

But it only goes so far, admitted Kershaw with a laugh — don’t expect him to be hitting the biathlon range any time soon.

“They shouldn’t let me shoot, let’s put it that way,” he chuckled. “Maybe I should start in the new (indoor range); no one needs to be see me on the range with real bullets. I might get in trouble from Fish and Wildlife for killing a stray elk by accident.”

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